You awaken feeling strangled, coughing and choking as you fall to your hands and knees. Your eyes open wearily - and you see nothing. Gasping for air, you glance about wildly, disoriented, and realize to your horror that you're in the middle of a vast, black emptiness. Terrified, you instinctively grasp at the void about you for something - anything - solid. You realize that despite the enveloping darkness, your arms glow with a strange light - suddenly you pause and rack your brain for any hint as to what's going on. The last you remember clearly is being sold to Tartarus Inc. You remember them strip-searching you, your last possessions taken away before the coarse-mannered guards threw you into an empty cell. Everything about it seems a struggle to recall - clouded and fogged as though a distant memory.

A glow brightens to your right - in surprise and slight fear, you scoot back across the floor as you try to assess the new threat. A human form, dressed in a Tartarus jumpsuit, appears and crumples to the floor, choking and gasping for breath.

I'm so sorry, the voice says with an air that makes it clear her words are merely a formality. I understand that this experience is mentally agonizing. We're far from perfecting cryotech, you see, but you are here to help us correct that. You are our test subjects. If you ever want to awaken, both of you will cooperate. You've always cooperated with us before, so I have no doubt you'll do so now.

Your mind whirls. You vaguely remember being pulled from your isolation cell - you remember being marched down a hallway, blindfolded, cuffed and gagged - something injected into your arm. That's all you remember. Cryotech? That doesn't even exist...

Then it sinks in: You've always cooperated with us before. "Before???"

It's "brain maintenance," the voice explains in a resigned, curt tone, as though she's said it a hundred times. Cryotech has a tendency to leave one vegetative. Now, the both of you... make your decision, and we will begin.

The void hums, and shivers to life - six pale, golden hexagons of light appear pm the floor around you, spaced well apart. On each: a short paragraph of text.

You feel like you've done this before.

But which to stand upon? And who is this person next to you?

Desert defense
Stranded in the Alviguerran Badlands on Oreipa Beta, you find yourself surrounded by Calvono's gang - a group of lowlife pirates that want you dead. You manage to stay away long enough to find cover in an abandoned building... but can you hold out against their superior numbers?

Drone bait
Your pals are trying to break into a government storage facility, but the base's attack drones are onto them. Try to draw their fire ASAP, and then figure out how to stay alive to finish the mission.This tile has the silhouette of a spaceship underneath the text.

Jungle ambush
Stranded in a jungle, you find yourself lost, dazed, and confused, with no idea where the spaceport is. If only there was a trail... and if only there weren't dozens of hungry beasts waiting for you behind every tree.

Zombie strike
Typical zombie scenario. Your little group of three is trying to break into a secure bomb shelter, but the zombies have figured out where you are. They're coming. Take cover and hold them off for as long as possible before you're inevitably eaten.

Civilian uprising
For a long time, you and your police buddies on Antonga IV have been "commandeering" the local population's most prized possessions "for the defense of the colony". Now, however, they've found you out... and they're coming to take back what's theirs.

Something different
You are thrown into a random mission without any idea of what you're up against. It may or may not suit your abilities and loadout.A question mark dominates this particular hexagon.

- This is canon, but your character does not necessarily need to remember it. You have the OOC option to have a mindwipe of the experience post-tryout/pre-campaign. Whether your teammate's character remembers the experience is up to them.
- This is VR. You know this, but your character does not necessarily know this. Whether your character can figure it out is up to your discretion.
- A spaceship silhouette means the mission is CASKET-based.
- Your mission selection is quasi-randomly assigned with a weighted algorithm that takes your personalities, stats, skills, and official loudout into account.
- On average, half your tryout points will come from the tryout mission itself. You are being judged from the moment the thread is posted.
- Each team will have their own tryout thread. Do not post in someone else's thread.
- Type in ((out of character parentheses)) in the tryout thread if you feel it necessary. No need to post elsewhere - it's your thread and no one else's, so you needn't feel bad about cluttering it up.
- There are no maps. As this is VR, it uses "fluid space" as REKT VR traditionally has - that is to say, if you imagine something is there, it may well be there (unless I say it isn't). In a forest and need cover? Say there's a tree next to you and duck behind it. This will probably work. Want a bigger weapon? Say you pick up your death ray from behind the counter - but don't be surprised if I say there's nothing there. Use common sense and don't try to cheat the system - and above all, ignore nothing that I say.
- To activate your choice, both of you must stand on your golden hexagon.
- If you die, that's okay. If you die within the first turn or two, that's not okay.
- Don't be surprised if I cut the mission short. I almost certainly will. These are not meant to be full missions - it is merely a sample to judge from.
- Asking for ideas from other people is completely permitted. Offering ideas is completely permitted as well - as long as you don't do it in someone else's thread.
- Poor performance of your teammate does not mean you do any more poorly in the tryout. You are judged separately.
- I will be judging a number of things, but can't give specifics without compromising the judging process.
- Have fun! If it's not fun for you, let me know, and I'll try to switch things around.

Grant, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, thy sauce;
and in sauce, noodles;
and in noodles, meatballs;
and in meatballs, knowledge;
and from knowledge, knowledge of what is tasty;
and from knowledge of what is tasty, the love of spaghetti;
and from spaghetti, the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
RAmen

"I be Doctor Ishmael Big bin Mahmood, a humble servant of His Holiness the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I see we were frozen; but 'tis is fine, too, for He can find use for frozen meat in His heavenly kitchen, too."

((Just a reminder: Underlines are for actions that I need to make a response to. This helps make my job considerably easier. You don't need to change those posts, it's just a reminder for the future. Standing on the hexagons (or, alternatively, trying to attack each other) are the only actions that need to be underlined here.))

Talvieno wrote:((Just a reminder: Underlines are for things that I need to make a response to. This helps make my job considerably easier. You don't need to change those posts, it's just a reminder for the future.))

((So we can use regular words, no quotations, underlines, or double parentheses when denoting actions other than dancing on the lovely looking fruity squares? ))

Please don't take my advice. You will wind up in jail if you do.
For some reason, I feel obliged to display how many people have talked in IRC over the past 2 hours:

Desert Defense
Stranded in the Alviguerran Badlands on Oreipa Beta, you find yourself surrounded by Calvono's gang - a group of lowlife pirates that want you dead. You manage to stay away long enough to find cover in an abandoned building... but can you hold out against their superior numbers?

The hexagon below your feet glows to a bright, brilliant gold, shining up around you, casting flickering shimmers across the clothes of you and your companion, rising upwards in a climbing crescendo of light as it drowns out all else - so strong you can almost feel it - almost taste it -

- and then, with a flash... it's gone. There is nothing.

There isn't sound - there isn't light - not even your hands are visible. It's as though naught exists but your thoughts, and that in a vacuum. The world around you darkens even further for a moment - blacker than your mind can even process.

And all is quiet.

It stays that way... but only for a moment.

With a roar, everything around you glares blindingly to life as the scenery rushes past you. You squint as your eyes adjust to the light, and look down at the handlebars - the meter on the dash reads over 160 kph. You're on a hoverbike in the Alviguerran badlands, fleeing with your companion from Calvono's gang. They're not five minutes behind, and ever gaining.

Your radio crackles to life. "Fifteen minutes, guys - just hold out for fifteen minutes more! Entering atmo now. I'm almost there." It's Anya - your ship's pilot. She had to make an emergency stop on Lox Station to fix some busted hydraulic fluid tubing, or she'd be here already. She didn't want to leave you on Alviguerra, but you had to trade your goods back in town. It's not your fault Calvono hates your guts. Well... technically, it is, but that's a story for a different time.

Leaning to the side, you race around another canyon bend as small desert shrubs whip past beneath you, onto another straight stretch by the riverbank. "We'll have to stop," your companion calls out, voice muffled by his windmask. You know he's right. They'd catch up with you before long even if you weren't both low on fuel. You'll have to make your final stand... and as you round another curve, you see the place to do it: an old, abandoned, metal-plated house built to endure the elements. "This is the place," you shout, reining in the throttle as you prepare to gradually slow your craft to a stop. It hums and whirs as you near the building, sputtering as it dutifully tries to continue on its last dregs of fuel. You ride it down, coming to a stop by the front door, park, and dismount.

The house is shabby, rusted, and worn by sandstorms - a patchwork set of corrugated plates forming walls and a roof around a metallic frame. The door is unlocked; you enter and take a quick look around. It's only one room - and not a house at all, but rather more of a small warehouse/large shack, filled with crates, barrels, tools, materials, and other odds and ends. There's a faint smell of ethanol emanating from one of the far corners of the room, and... surprisingly enough, a bed at one of the opposing corners, decorated with a lifeless, desiccated corpse. There are a few holes in the walls here and there, too; sunlight filters in through them in rays thick with dust. They're perfect places to take potshots out of - or to get shot through.

It's not much, but you'll have to find some way to hold out here for the next quarter-hour... or you're done for. Anya may be able to gun down or otherwise scare off Calvono and his gang, but it won't do any good if you're already gone. You won't have long to prepare... Calvono will inevitably show up, following the trail your bikes left in the dust - it won't be more than a few minutes from now. You only hope you'll have time to rig up some sort of defenses to keep them out, or they'll walk right in the front door and gun you down.

Perform an extra-quick funeral sermon to honour the corpse and lift our spirits:

"Me point is that a life o' piracy has no guarantees about the causes o' death, an' as such no guarantees about what shall be done with the bodies.
As piracy is the Noodly Lord's ideal lifestyle for His followers, it would make sense that He would not place strict requirements on us
about last rites.
Presumably a death during an act o' piracy would be ideal, but it must be remembered that many traditional allies o' pirates are not, in fact, pirates (for instance, wenches, barkeepers, shipwrights, even the royalty in some cases), an' thus it also makes sense that even
this is not required.
Me advice to ye, worried Pastafarians, is that ye should arrange for whatever pleases ye to happen to yer body when ye dies.
There be no guarantees that it will happen, but ultimately, it probably doesn't matter."

Unceremoniously dump the corpse outside.

"Miles, matey, we need to fortify 'dis feeble abode. Please look around 'dem boxes, see if there's anything we can use"

Drag the hoverbike inside the house;
AND tear off the lid covering the engine.
Use the now-free bed to barricade the door.
IF necessary, use Gravity Amp to simplify these tasks by creating a low-G field.

Last edited by outlander on Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:59 am, edited 1 time in total.